Fake History, How Do We Correct The Record? Part Three.

Fake History, How Do We Correct The Record? Part Three: Join us for this three-part series with Tim Barton sharing at the Profamily Legislators Conference. Everyone is talking about fake news but what about the fake history being taught in schools? How do we recognize it? How should we counter it? And how do we correct the record? Tune in now to learn more.

Transcription note: As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith And The Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live, where we talk about today’s hottest topics on policy, faith, and the culture, always from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

We’re going to skip the intro today and jump right into where we left off yesterday, with Tim Barton speaking at the ProFamily Legislators Conference on the topic of fake history. How do we counter it? How do we correct it? Here’s Tim Barton, picking up where we left off yesterday.

If you missed yesterday and the day before, go to WallBuildersLive.com today and you can get the entire series. Let’s pick up where we left off yesterday with Tim Barton on fake history.

Tim:

You said, “When you get robbed.”

He said, “Oh yes. If you’re walking down the streets, and a police officer or the military see you, they will recognize you’re not from here,” and he says, “Our government is so corrupt, that many of the police officers, and many of our military, their family’s are having a very hard time getting food to eat. So what they do is they rob all the tourists. So they’re going to say, ‘Give me all the money in your pocket, and I won’t take you to jail.’ So you have to show them your pockets are empty.”

He says, “If you put all the money in there, you’ll lose all your money. So put the rest in your sock, give them the money, keep going.”

Who Are Self Evident Rights Self Evident To?

They don’t believe Governor Chavez will protect our rights.

So it’s crazy when I started thinking about this, because Jefferson said that this is self-evident.

Well, it wasn’t self-evident to the King, which is why we had to separate. So who are these rights self-evident to? And here’s what’s a fascinating discovery. They are only self-evident to people that actually know what the Bible teaches. Think about the idea that we have equality. Where do we get that idea from? The Bible.

Let’s go to Genesis, where God makes male and female in his image—fascinating thought about Adam and Eve, the Bible does not tell us what shape, size, or color they were.

Why? Because that has nothing to do with value.

We’re God’s kids, created in His image, and that’s what makes us who we are. That’s where value comes from, not because of the culture, not because of the skin, shape, or size. None of that. Nope. That’s what the Bible teaches.

See, the Bible teaches, in Genesis, when Adam and Eve walked in the garden, they enjoyed life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

All rights were given in the garden, before government ever came along. Government didn’t come along until Chapter 9, when God’s said, “A man’s blood, by man his blood will be shed.”

The governor’s job is to protect your rights. If someone’s going to violate your right to live, we’re going to get rid of that person. The government’s job is to protect your rights. These ideas, that were obvious to the founding fathers, are only obvious to people that know the Bible.

The Two Treatises of Government

I would contend this is why they’re not evident, or self-evident to all other cultures, because this is not just intuitive in humans.

Now, people who hear the founding fathers go, “Wait a second Tim, are you suggesting they’re influenced by the Bible?”

Yes. I can go through all of them individually, and tell you exactly who is influenced and how they’re influenced, I just don’t have time. So let me just give you the Reader’s Digest version.

When they do the Declaration, there actually were a group of guys, people like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Wilson, and Benjamin Rush, all of them said they got the Declaration from the ideas of John Locke’s work, The Two Treatises of Government. Richard Henry Lee said they just copied the Declaration from John Locke’s work.

Why does that matter? Well, if you have ever read John Locke’s The Two Treatises of Government, the entire first treatise is ultimately, kind of like, an exegesis from him about the Bible. He was writing a rebuttal to a man who had written about the divine right of kings, and he said, “Adam was the first king in the Bible, and then Adam’s sons were kings, and kings have been around since the beginning.”

John Locke writes his book and says that’s stupid.

Adam was created in God’s image. He was created to rule over creation, but God did not put Adam to rule over all humans. He ruled over his family, but that’s different because that’s family government, that’s not a kingship. So John Locke, his entire first book is just an exegesis from Genesis about how God created the order against the divine right of kings.

What About the Constitution?

Well, in both of the two treatises, he quotes more than fifteen hundred Bible verses talking about the application of government, and the founding fathers said that’s where we get our ideas from.

Well, that’s not even an untested statement. But people today don’t know that John Locke’s work is all about what the Bible teaches in regards to the divine right of kings or in his case against the divine right of kings.

But that’s not where they stop, because we don’t know, “OK, what does it say about the Constitution? Because obviously we don’t live under the Declaration,” is what people argue today.

So, the Constitution. Well, there was a group of professors from Houston, from LSU, and they said, “We want to see what influenced the Founding Fathers.”

They actually put their findings in the book called The Origins of American Constitutionalism. They went through thousands, and thousands, and thousands of their original writings, and they made note of every time there is a source or a quotation, any time they reference somebody, because they wanted to see who influenced them the most. What they discovered was the number one cited individual was Charles Montague, the second most cited individuals, William Blackstone, third was John Locke. Now John Locke was the most quoted during the American Revolution, but in the 40 years they looked at, he was only the third most quoted individual.

But those are the most quoted individuals. It’s not the most quoted source. The number one quoted source was the Bible, with more than 34 percent of every quote or source or citation they found coming from the Bible. So you’re going to tell me they weren’t religious when the thing they quote the most was the Bible? Really?

If the Founding Fathers Were Atheist/Deist?Agnostic, Why Did they Pray?

But we just don’t know history anymore. And by the way, so the argument against them is largely, “They’re atheists, agnostics or they were deist.”

Well, here’s the number one thing I’d tell college kids to rebut that argument. I say—anytime somebody says that, you should ask this question—,”If they didn’t believe in God, then why, in 1815, did they have more than 4500 government prayer proclamations from presidents, from governors, and from the Congress? Because if they didn’t believe in God, why are we praying, right?

Atheist wouldn’t, agnostics wouldn’t, and deists wouldn’t. Deists wouldn’t because God doesn’t get involved, so what do you ever pray. Right?

So I can very easily show they are not atheist, agnostic, or deist. But here’s the point, we have our kids learning these things, and if we taught them to ask basic questions, we would come to a different conclusion.

Let me show you two more things, then we’ll be done.

“The founders were racist bigoted slaveholders.”

I hear this all the time. I spoke to a high school earlier this week and talked about this very thing, and I said, “OK kids, who can you name in this picture that had slaves?” Everybody finds Jefferson.

I said, “OK. Who else do you know?”

Well, George Washington is in there somewhere. He had slaves.

Out of 200 Founding Fathers, How Many Owned Slaves?

I said, “Well, he actually was not in the picture. He was a general in the revolution. But yes, he had slaves. But if you want to expand beyond the signers of the Declaration, we can include the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, all the Founding Fathers, there’s more than 200 of them. So now you have two. Who else do you know?”

Nobody knows anybody else. And yet we’ve largely been told they all had slaves.

Bring A Speaker To Your Area

Tim:

Hey, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders. And as you’ve had the opportunity to listen to WallBuilders Live, you’ve probably heard a wealth of information about our nation, about our spiritual heritage, about the religious liberties, and about all the things that make America exceptional.

And you might be thinking, “As incredible as this information is, I wish there was a way that I could get one of the WallBuilders guys to come to my area and share with my group.”

Whether it be a church, whether it be a Christian school, or public school, or some political event, or activity, if you’re interested in having a WallBuilders speaker come to your area, you can get on our website at www.WallBuilders.com and there’s a tab for scheduling. If you’ll click on that tab, you’ll notice there’s a list of information from speakers bio’s, to events that are already going on. And there’s a section where you can request an event, to bring this information about who we are, where we came from, our religious liberties, and freedoms. Go to the WallBuilders website and Bring a speaker to your area.

Look at the Whole Picture

Tim:

41 of the 56 signers, at some point in their life, did own slaves. At some point in their life. But did all 41 maintain slaves their whole lives?

And this is where, if we asked the rest of the questions or saw the rest of the story, we would think different. Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush started the very first abolition society in American, 1774. Why is that significant? Because both of them owned slaves.

They were both told by a king appointed official that, “You are not allowed to arbitrarily free your slaves.”

Well, Franklin has been calling for separations in 1770, so he says it’s just one more reason we should separate because we can’t even free slaves. So these two guys started the first abolition society, actually trying to free slaves. Benjamin Rush takes this society and makes it an international society, saying we need all 13 colonies to end slavery. Benjamin Franklin teams up with Francis Hopkinson. They started the first series of schools to train and educate blacks in America, specifically these African-Americans who don’t know how to read or write. That’s interesting because under the king it was illegal to train any slaves, specifically, it was illegal to educate any blacks.

Why would it be illegal to educate slaves or blacks? Because the easiest way to keep people enslaved, is to keep them ignorant.

By the way, in several Confederate States, that remained the law till the end of the civil war.

The Vast Majority of the Founding Fathers were not Racist

Those two guys started the first school for blacks. Stephen Hopkins, the governor of Rhode Island, in 1776 one month after the Declaration, he signed the first anti slavery law in America. By the way, he’s a Quaker, it’s why he’s wearing a hat. Quakers were always against slavery.

John Witherspoon was a president of Christian University, he also had slaves, ended up freeing the slaves. He actually brought blacks to be educated at Princeton. As the revolution goes on and we separate from Great Britain, he starts bringing blacks to be educated.

The very first Professor, black professor, in America was a professor at Princeton appointed by John Witherspoon. That’s kind of a big deal if we’re going to say, “Wait a second, these guys are racist.”

No. They weren’t all racist. Some of them may have been, but not all of them. William Ellery and Rufus King are the two guys that put it in the Northwest Land Ordinance that we could not have new states that had slaves, because we’re trying to get rid of slavery. You have guys like James Wilson. He’s the guy that got it in the Constitution that the slave trade had to be abolished by 1808. He actually fought and argued at the Constitutional Convention that if we could abolish the slave trade and let slavery wean itself off in America, we wouldn’t have to deal with this problem anymore if we just would stop importing slaves into America.

Even Some Who Owned Slaves at the Start Changed their Views

Now the reason it’s worth noting this is because we often hear that the Founding Fathers were racist. We never hear about the ones who were anti slavery, the ones who weren’t racist, and even a lot of the ones we hear about, some of them were racist, at least you could argue were racist, at least some of their views and position on slavery before the revolution. John Jay’s an interesting example.

John Jay actually writes, during the revolution, “It would be inconsistent of me to say I am fighting for my own freedom while I support the slavery of others.”

The revolution changes perspective, because when it became personal, he realized, “Wow. Slavery. Nobody likes to be enslaved. We shouldn’t allow slavery to continue.” We don’t look at the whole context of their lives, or even the amount of founding fathers that ended up being against slavery, started abolitionists ideas in their state, passing anti slavery laws in their state. But again we don’t hear the whole story. The idea that the founders were racist, that’s fake.

Now, some were racist. There’s no doubt. But I can show you way more who were anti slavery than you could show me anybody that was for slavery, and we just don’t hear the rest of the story.

Let me finish one more thing, and we’re going to break for you to go to dinner, and actually we can talk about this a long time. We stole land from the Indians. This is being taught in almost every high school and college today. What question would you ask in this? The first question I ask is, first of all, who is we?

Who Had It First?

That’s important, because I’ve never stolen land from anybody. Who’s we? Which Indians did we steal land from? That’s also important.

“We stole land from the Cherokees.”

Next question, were the Cherokees the first ones to possess the land? Oh, they weren’t? OK. Well, who did they get the land from? Oh? They conquered the Iroquois. Okay we’re that Iroquois the first ones to be on the land? Oh, they weren’t. Who did they get the land from? They conquered the Creeks? Oh? Were they the first ones on the land? Let’s just back up in the history of conquest and the history of Native Americans. And I’m not anti Native American, like most Americans I feel like I’m part native american, right? Like that—I think the studies show that 92 percent of Americans profess to have some kind of like Indian heritage in them—it’s not largely true, but we feel that way. I’m not anti Indian. However, if we’re going to make an accusation, let’s at least know what the boundaries of parameters are in this accusation. Well, we’re told the early settlers stole from the Indians. Well, which early settlers? Because there were too early colonies.

Had the Pilgrims Stolen the Land, Thanksgiving Would Not Have Happened

There was Jamestown and Plymouth, and remember Plymouth—Cape Plymouth is where the Pilgrims were about to celebrate Thanksgiving, the first Thanksgiving was 1621. Now, they believe was October of 1621, nonetheless 102 Pilgrims came to America and there were 51 pilgrims left alive. That included the women, the children, and the men. 51 left.

Chief Massasoit brought 90 Indian braves, 90 men. Warriors actually. Most of the food they brought because the pilgrims weren’t very good hunters. But Chief Massasoit came with 90 Indian braves.

Here’s the question: If the Pilgrims had stolen the land from the Indians, why did the Indians come bring food and celebrate with the people that robbed them?

This Precarious Moment Book

David:

This is David Barton. I want to let about a brand new book we have called This Precarious Moment: Six Urgent Steps That Will Save You, Your family, and Our Country. Jim Garlow and I have co-authored this book and we take six issues that are hot in the culture right now.

Issues that we’re dealing with, issues such as immigration, race relations, our relationship with Israel, the rising generation Millennials, and the absence of the church in the culture wars, and where American heritage is, our godly heritage. We look at all six of those issues right now that are under attack and we give you both Biblical and historical perspective on those issues that provide solutions on what each of us can do right now to make a difference.

These are all problems that are solvable if we’ll get involved. So you can grab the book This Precarious Moment and find out what you can do to make a difference. This Precarious Moment is available at WallBuilders.com.

They Sold It At Their Own Price

Tim:

Because if you outnumber them almost 2 to 1, I feel like the first Thanksgiving might have gone a little different had you stolen the land.

Did you know the Pilgrims actually have the longest lasting peace treaty between any Anglos and any Indians? It lasted more than 40 years.

See, when you start looking to the early settlers, the Reverend Thomas Sukur, the founder of Connecticut, actually bought Connecticut from the Indians at a price set by the Indians.

The Reverend Roger Williams bought Rhode Island at the price set by the Indians, the Reverend William Penn bought Pennsylvania, on three different occasions! There were three tribes that were warring over the land, they all came at him.

“You’re on our land.” He said, “I’m so sorry. The king actually appointed so I could come. I didn’t know it was yours. Can I buy it?”

He bought it from three tribes because all three tribes named ownership. Now one of the arguments today is, “Yeah, but he didn’t give him fair market value.”

Allow me to explain how the free enterprise works. At the end of the exchange—and this is a reality. The Indians didn’t fully understand even the notions of private property at that point because they were a nomadic people. They’re traveling, and following the herds based on the winters, and they’re going different places. When these Anglos are trying to buy it, the Indians are like “ You’re going to pay me for what? OK. Yeah, no, no, you pay us. Yeah, we’ll take some hatchets and blankets.”

Everyone Was Happy With the Deal

Everybody thought they were getting the best in the deal, right? Nobody feels cheated. But the early settlers recognized private property rights and did not steal from the Indians, and didn’t think they were violated because they said, “What can we give you?” And they said, “Oh, well that’s what you want. That’s what we will give you.”

Well, it’s worth noting when you look going forward, that we actually, in any of America’s founding, we never approved largely of the mistreatment that happened to Indians, there were occasions, but it was not something we legally approved or even encouraged.

In fact, in 1789, the Northwest Land Ordinance, in Article 3, has a section dealing with Indians. “The utmost good will always be observed toward the Indians. Their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent.”

It was illegal. Now, people would argue, “But it still happened.” Yeah. Well, murder is illegal though people still murder. But it’s illegal, that means we didn’t think it was right and we didn’t encourage it. That’s significant, because we’re not saying, “Yeah, you know what? Go take from the Redskins.”

No, no, you cannot go steal from people. That’s wrong!

Again, this Judeo-Christian ethic is coming out of them. We actually, at WallBuilders when we go over on Sunday, if you come, we have several actual Indian land deeds.

1728, 7,500 acres. This is from New York for 300,000 acres.

There Was No Land Theft

That’s a big piece of property. That’s a nice farm, probably some good hunting on there, that’s awesome. This is one of my favorite though 1775. It was a deed to the White Woman, is all it says. Now historically, it has been documented that the White Woman was Mary Jimerson, however that’s property ownership, and notice…. that’s a woman. I thought women didn’t have rights back then.

When you start looking historically it changes some of the narrative now. When we look at American history, where there were a lot of atrocities against American Indians, and that happened. That’s part of American history. There were atrocities against Indians, most of them happen in the Jacksonian era going forward.

Again, this is a big—now, under Jackson, expanding American territory, so there’s no doubt that as America grows, yes. There were so many violations in this Jacksonian era. However, you can’t say America was founded and built on the theft of Indians, at least not in this regard.

Now, if you talk to Andrew Jackson, yeah. This was a racist Democrat. Yes, I’m with you. The guy did a lot of things that were not right, there’s no doubt. But you can attribute it back to the early founding and the founding fathers largely, but this is, again, there’s so many fake narratives and we could go on, and on, and on.

Columbus Evil?

But this is what we’re seeing, and I’m just going to explain one thought here and we’re going to be done. There are now cities that are are changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day because they’re saying Columbus was a terrible monster.

Now I would love to talk with you and tell you the story about Columbus. He was not a perfect person.

My starting place with anybody is that all of us are falling short of the word of God. So I don’t feel like I have to tell anybody ever that somebody wasn’t perfect. I don’t mean to convince you George Washington was a sinner, hopefully you know that. However, to say that Christopher Columbus was an evil person, we’ve now overstepped the boundaries.

By the way, even the fact—Austin, Texas, we’re to celebrate indigenous peoples? I don’t mind saying let’s celebrate indigenous peoples, but here’s the question: I want to know which Indigenous people are we going to celebrate.

Avalon Project

Tim:

Hey, guys, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders. I know you hear my dad and Rick talk a lot about our Founding Fathers about the original intent of our nation, a constitutional heritage that we have. And really we’ve seen how far we slipped away from that. And I know a lot of us as we hear my dad and Rick talk think, “I wish there was a place that I could go where I could see these documents and I could read and learn about the Founding Fathers firsthand. See the things they did.”

I want to give you some websites today that can help you accomplish that very thing. If you get online you can go to places like Library of Congress and you can look under their century of lawmaking or historical documents. You can go to the Avalon Project, to the Founders Constitution, Google Books, or even the internet archives.

Or you can just go to WallBuilders.com. We have a section for our WallBuilders Library. And under that section we have different subgroups for historical documents, historical writings, even a place where you can get helpful links to find out more information about other websites. Where you can do research for yourself and find the truth for yourself. Friends, this is the time that we need to know who we are and where we came from. WallBuilders.com is a great place to go.

Moment From American History

This is Tim Barton with another moment from American history. The Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees to every individual the right to keep and bear arms, has been targeted for years now by those who are determined to dismantle the individual right to self protection.

Opponents argue that, “Only the militia, the military, and law enforcement are to have and use firearms.” But those who wrote the Second Amendment strenuously disagreed, including Founding Father Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the declaration, a president of the Continental Congress, and one of those who actually framed the Second Amendment.

He declared, “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”

For more information about Richard Henry Lee and the history of the Second Amendment go to WallBuilders.com.

There Were Many Indians Who Were Evil

Tim:

Perhaps we should talk about the history of the Texas Rangers, and why they came into existence because of the Comanches and what the Comanches did.

Or how the Comanches came to an end.

It wasn’t because of the Texas Rangers, or the Calvary. You know how the Comanches were defeated? There were dozens of tribes that joined with the Calvary and the Texas Rangers who had to fight against the Comanches.

Why?

Because the other tribes were tired of being murdered, and raped, and scalped themselves by the Indians, and they said, “Wait a second, you guys with the Boom-Boom sticks. We’d love to be on your side for a while. Can we come fight with you?”

See, the reality is we teach history and generalizations without giving specifics. So we’ve generalized Columbus is evil. OK, when was he evil? Well, he promoted slavery. Who did he enslave?

Indians.

Which Indians?

All of them!

Nope!

There was one tribe he allowed his men to enslave, and the tribe of cannibals who actually killed and ate some of their men.

And this is also the era of conquest, where there’s generally two options. You either kill the conquered, or you enslave the conquered.

Now for those cannibal Indians, they had a third option for the conquered. The only tribe they enslaved were the cannibals that had already killed and eaten some of their men. But we don’t even teach the full story anymore. This is where we have to learn to change even the way we approach what we see with history or news, because we see stuff all the time, how can we navigate it? And more specifically, how can we help our people learn to navigate?

Don’t Believe Everything You See

Guys, you can’t believe the first thing you see.

“But I really like this guy!”

Okay, then follow Reagan’s advice: Trust but verify. Until you verified it, don’t stick with it. This is part of what we want to help encourage the next generation, and especially if you’re dealing with millennials or GenZers.

They’re not learning to be critical thinkers. They’re not learning to ask questions, so they believe in all kinds of nonsense. We have to help them be people that pursue truth. Ultimately the Bible tells us in Hosea, is that Jesus said, “My people perish for a lack of knowledge.”

America is in so much trouble right now because we don’t even know what truth is anymore. We have to help the next generation learn to be people that pursue truth, that way we can discover truth, because truth is what sets us free.

Jesus is truth. Without truth, the gospel message means nothing.

How to Fight Fake History and More on WallBuilders Live

Rick:

Well folks, you’ve been listening to Tim Barton speaking on fake history and how to counter it. It was a presentation at the ProFamily Legislators Conference a few weeks ago. The entire presentation is available right now at WallBuildersLive.com. Thank you for listening to WallBuilders Live.

WALLBUILDERS LIVE! with David Barton, Tim Barton and Rick Green is a daily journey into the past to capture the ideas of the Founding Fathers of America and then apply them to the major issues of today. Featured guests will include Congressmen, Senators, and other elected officials, as well as experts, activists, authors, and commentators on a variety of issues facing America.